Thread: Breaking News from Google -

I just got notification that Google is discontinuing their affiliate program. I have only participated in a few programs there so it is not such a big deal for me, but it was nice in that the affiliate payments were added into the Adsense income and you did not need to break another threshold in order to get paid.

The Google email:

An update on Google Affiliate Network

Important updates for Google Affiliate Network publishers and advertisers

Our goal with Google Affiliate Network has been to help advertisers and publishers improve their performance across the affiliate ecosystem. Cost-per-action (CPA) marketing has rapidly evolved in the last few years, and we constantly evaluate our products to ensure that we’re focused on the services that will have the biggest impact for our advertisers and publishers. To that end, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire the Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving great results for clients.

Publishers can continue to earn revenue through the AdSense network. And marketers can take advantage of other CPA-oriented Google tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer to drive valuable online sales and conversions. These areas are growing rapidly and we continue to invest significantly in them.

We’ll continue to support our customers as we wind down the product over the next few months. While we will no longer be adding new product functionality, we will maintain the platform during the transition period. We plan to disable publisher relationships from advertiser programs on July 31, 2013. Publisher payments will be disbursed for network activity generated through this date. We will continue to make certain functionality available through October 31, 2013 for retrieving reports, reconciling orders, and processing payments.

A huge thanks to all our advertisers, publishers and the team that has worked tirelessly on Google Affiliate Network over the past few years. We look forward to helping you grow your business in the future.

If you have any questions, please contact us.

Sincerely,
The Google Affiliate Network Team

Wow. So it's not profitable for Google I guess. or Maybe not enough advertisers.

Probably the ROI is just not at a level that Google is looking for, but it could also be that their business plan has evolved in a direction that makes it less important.

I think Google is cooking something big as replacement for this one. Looks like this program growth failed Google's expectation.

I've been in this program almost from the beginning. I have never had a single click on any of their advertisements. I guess people are bored of advertisements everywhere. Their advertisers are mostlu unknown brands, which doesn't create confidence.

As Wink said I guess it is some other direction they are going with.
Google is know for experimenting/copying everything that is hot in the business
and so many times they failed keeping it profitable, but some of those projects turned to be very good.
I guess it is numbers game.

Originally Posted by bluearrow

Wow. So it's not profitable for Google I guess. or Maybe not enough advertisers.

I think so.
But what will happen to the person who run the affiliate programer?